“It’s better than nothing,” my mother reassures me. “It will be fine, don’t be afraid.”
My mother is trying to believe this. But she doesn’t trust the whole thing. She’s afraid.
“It’ll pay off, you’ll see,” says my father. “The collective just had a bad year. They couldn’t even pay the work brigades. But it won’t always be like that,” he keeps saying in a soft, monotone, restrained voice. My mother slams the pot of corn porridge down on the table.
“To hell with that! Do you really believe that, or do you take me for an idiot? Because if you believe that, there’s a big problem with your brain,” she says.
“We’ll see. We’ll see how it goes,” says my father.
“That’s what the blind man says,” my mother says, getting in the last word.
There is a restrained nervousness in my father’s voice. The groundwork was laid last year. This year, production on the mud fields has already begun. My father will be the machine operator. It’s true that he’ll have to live out there in the little cabin night and day. It is in the interest of the people’s economy for the machines to be looked after properly. There will be pumps of great value there. The leadership of the collective has great expectations for the success of the Rice Production Branch. The Party secretary and the council president, who my father calls Guszti, have already congratulated the president of the collective in the House of Culture. On the March 15 holiday, the launch of the rice paddies was called a revolutionary change.
I ASK MY MOTHER WHAT THE WORD REVOLUTION MEANS. Just at this moment, she is wiping the table with a wet cleaning rag.
“That has nothing to do with us,” she says. And then nothing else.
She is obstinately silent. In the House of Culture, the Comrade Director of the collective spoke about how the Rice Production Branch is essential to the village. Like a morsel of bread, that’s how he put it. Then they sang “The Internationale,” which everyone calls “The Inchy-Winchy,” because the previous party secretary made that up.
“Comrades, let us sing ‘The Inchy-Winchy,’” and then no one can take it seriously. Everyone remembers the story. They nearly explode from laughter. I like “The Internationale,” but I can’t stand the national anthem. I hate singing, because it’s like I’m at somebody’s funeral.
Guszti, who is comrade council president, spoke about Petőfi. “Petőfi is part of our family,” that’s what he said. I don’t understand what we have in common with the revolution or with Petőfi. And my mother won’t say.
She’s always in a bad mood and hardly speaks. She weeps in silence or she yells loudly. Without any transition. She shouts, then there’s a huge silence. The silence is the worst. After that, she wants to jump into the well. She goes up to the attic with a rope. My sister and I grab at her hands, her legs; she struggles, wanting to shake us off. But we don’t let her.
“M’my, don’t die! Don’t leave us here!” we cry out. My sister is crying, too.
“Leave me. Let me croak once and for all,” she shouts. Her hair is disheveled, undone, matted. Her face is swollen and covered in tears. “Leave me, because I’m going to kill myself tonight anyway, when you’re asleep,” she says.
At night, we don’t dare fall asleep. We alternate watching over her in case she tries to sneak out. We stay up all night. When it’s my turn, I keep falling asleep. I wake up with a choking sensation: has my mother left? But our mother is always sleeping deeply or pretending to do so. Mutely, I exchange signs with my sister. I am very tired, and I am afraid I will fall back asleep.
My mother talks about how we’ll miss her when she isn’t here anymore. When the yellow earth has swallowed her up.
“Then you’ll scrape at the earth with your bare hands. You’ll know what it’s like to be an orphan. You’ll know what a stepmother is like! And how bitter is the taste of bread from her hand,” she says.
“Please don’t die!” we plead. Both of us are sobbing. We are filled with fear.
“But it is certain. I will kill myself, if God doesn’t take me,” she says. “You will be orphans. And then you will be sorry that you weren’t obedient,” she repeats.
“Who walks outside so late at night in the cemetery?” My mother begins to recite the line of poetry memorized in grade school. About the frozen child. It makes me suffer. It hurts to hear it. My sister is also crying.
“Please stop, M’my! We’ll be good!” we beseech her. It hurts so much to hear it, but she always keeps repeating this line of verse. It’s worse than if she was beating us. My mother doesn’t stop, she recites it to the very end, cruelly.
Sometimes she does beat one of us. My father has not been at home now for a year. But today she was in a good mood. We wore white shirts. My grandfather bicycled over here to pay my mother a visit. We recited my grandfather’s favorite poem, the one that begins “I am Hungarian, I was born a Hungarian.”
“How are we relatives of Petőfi’s?” I ask. It keeps gnawing at me. Because we have a lot of relatives, but they don’t talk to us.
“Because Adam shit in the water, and Eve drank it up,” says my mother irritably, as she always does when I ask about relatives.
“We’re not relatives at all. It’s just something people say,” she answers.
“He’s your father’s relative. Not mine. Half of the village are Gardas, the other half are your father’s relatives. The Bobonkas, distant kin.” My mother doesn’t like my father’s relatives. They don’t like my mother, either.
TODAY WE WAITED THE ENTIRE DAY FOR THE MESSIAH, BUT he didn’t come. When we asked Mother in the morning what we were doing, she said that we were waiting.
“For what?” we asked.
“For what? Well, the Messiah,” she said. But that’s all she said, because she didn’t feel like talking. Sometimes she doesn’t feel like it, and then she doesn’t get up and she doesn’t talk to us.
We dawdled the entire day. I imagined that the Messiah really was coming. He arrived in the village from the Tökös bridge. Once inside the village, he turned off to the right, because he was coming to our house. I imagined that he was bringing me a gift. I would like a little violin so I could learn how to play it. My sister would like a doll that goes to sleep. One that can close its eyes. She would like one, even though she’s big already. If she got one, the other children would laugh at her.
“Then I’ll hide it. And I’ll just play with it at home,” she says.
“And I’ll tell everyone that my sister still plays with a doll,” I taunt her.
I would like a violin. I even had a dream about it. It was right next to my pillow, right near my head. I reached for it to pat it. I woke up; it had disappeared. It wasn’t there. I cried, because I had woken up.
Once I said to my mother, when she was in a good mood, that I would like a violin. She didn’t get angry at me, and she didn’t even rebuke me. But she didn’t promise it.
“We don’t have money for things like that. And what’s the point. Only Gypsies play the violin, like Aladár, who goes from house to house every Christmas playing, the poor thing.”
I didn’t dare tell her that it was when Aladár was singing at our house that I had begun to like the violin. My mother gave him some sausage out of pity. She even gave him some money. Since then he comes every year, but no one is happy about it. They don’t drive him away. They tolerate him. If he didn’t come, they would miss him. But if he stopped coming, they would get used to it. Aladár is afraid of everyone. When he plays his violin, he isn’t afraid.
I would also like to not be afraid. It’s not that I want to learn how to play the violin but that I want to not be afraid.
“What is a sheathless bean?” I ask my mother one evening. She looks at me. She just looks at me for a long time and doesn’t say anything.
“What has that got to do with you?” she says.
WHEN EASTER APPROACHES, MY MOTHER CLEANS HOUSE the entire day. She doesn’t speak a word until the stars come out. She s
its down only in the evening, when our little brother is already asleep. She puts two candles on the table and lights them while standing. She closes her eyes. She draws the flames toward herself. She covers her eyes with her hands.
“May the Lord, who has allowed us to reach this day, even though we are not all together, be blessed,” she says. She’s thinking of my father, who is always with the excavators, at the feed-mixer’s, or at the tavern. Now he’s in Kenderes. And he’s certainly already at the tavern, because tomorrow is Saturday and the workers can sleep in. When my mother sits down at the table, she puts her head in her hands. From the whimpering sound, we can tell that she’s crying.
“I’ll tell you a story,” she says, and she takes out a little bag of coins. Battered pengős, with the crown on the back and the slanting cross at the top. We call Máli “the cross” because she is my godmother, my “mother of the cross.” She is also my older sister’s adopted godmother. I like to play with the money because I can count it. I already know the numbers. For a long time now, my older sister and I have made little stacks of the money. Now I’m doing it just by myself.
While my mother tells the story, the petroleum lamp sputters and burns, because we are very sparing with the electric current. I make little piles on the table’s surface, which is the color of goose shit. I sort the pengős, the two-fillér notes with holes in them, the iron two-pengő coins.
They don’t give these out in the shops anymore. In the ancient world, when my mother was still a child, these were her treasures. Until the Communists kicked out the regent. We have to save them. My mother got them from my grandfather when he came home from Jutas. If a stranger comes to our house, we quickly shove the old money into a drawer. And start talking about something else.
MESSIYAH STANDS THERE AND SMILES. HE DOESN’T SAY anything. He just stands there. He squints in the sunlight. His face is bathed in the early spring sunlight. He is enjoying the warmth. He stands and he smiles. He has come from the Ramp.
“What are you staring at, Messiyah?” my older sister asks him.
“Nofing, nofing,” says Messiyah. He can’t speak correctly.
“So then don’t stand here,” she says to him.
“I’m juft wookin’ at fe wittel boy,” he answers and looks at me. The dark skin of his face is stretched over his bones. His cheekbones jump out of his skin. There are wrinkles all over his gaunt face. All of them lead to his eyes. His skin is dried out, by the wind or the sun. It is tanned and cracked like the earth in spring. The sparse thin beard is what really makes Messiyah different. He is the only one in the village with a beard. That is why he is mocked and called “Messiyah.” My father and all his relatives shave twice a week, Wednesday and Sunday evenings. Messiyah has no teeth. It’s like he never had any teeth. I can’t decide if he is already old or still young. If he is closer to my father or my grandfather in age.
“So don’t look,” my older sister says to him curtly. She takes my hand and pulls me away from the fence.
Our dog, Gypsy, doesn’t jump. All our dogs are called Gypsy. But in the village, no dog jumps at Messiyah. He is the only one who the dogs, always starving and therefore always in a rage, don’t jump at. They grow wild, chained up the entire day; they’re only let out at night. So the villagers tend to pass by behind the gardens. The paths in the middle of the unplowed grass, which serve to separate the allotments, lead to the outer fields. It is forbidden to till this unplowed balk. Along the bottom of the yards, surrounded by hedges, a footpath crosses the ends of the plowed fields. If someone doesn’t want to meet a person who’s angry at them, or if they’re in a hurry, then they pass along behind the gardens. It is forbidden for Gypsies to walk behind the gardens. Even now they don’t dare, because they remember how the gendarme would throw them to the ground if they grabbed even one snippet of something. Messiyah is bone thin. His neck is crooked, his head held stiffly. He always smiles. His smile is bitter. His eyes are expressionless. He talks the same way with everyone. In a uniformly guarded and deferential tone of voice. Everyone ridicules him. But Messiyah never gets angry. He is never angry. He always smiles. He takes off his hat when he speaks Hungarian. Even when he speaks with us. Messiyah knows what is proper, that’s what they say about him. Gypsies can only speak with Hungarians bareheaded. Even with children.
“Half-wit.”
“He’s touched.”
“Clumsy.”
“Poor wretch.”
That’s what they say about him. His entire body is stiff. Because of his stiff torso, his head held willfully askew, and his hanging, thread-thin arms, it seems as if Messiyah is not walking on earth but gliding through the air. As if his legs weren’t even touching the ground. Messiyah goes barefoot the entire year. We call it bayfoot. Even in the snow.
“He’wo,” says Messiyah. “Ha’ if yu’ moffa?” He always asks the same thing. He always inquires, of everyone, after the health of some relative.
“She’s fine,” says my sister curtly.
“A’ yu’ faffa?” Messiyah smiles.
“Don’t ask about everyone. They’re all fine!” my sister yells at him.
“Faf goo’,” says Messiyah gently. He smiles. We see into his toothless mouth. Inside his mouth, it’s dark. Thick darkness. His skin is also dark. His ears stick out. His cap is askew on his head.
“Ga’ bleth you,” he says, and, turning his face toward the sun, he returns with closed eyes to the Gypsy settlement. He doesn’t have to look where he’s going, he knows every step by heart.
SOMETIMES MY MOTHER READS TO US FROM A BOOK: THAT’S how she tells us stories. She isn’t used to reading. She doesn’t tell stories much because she’s always tired. Sometimes on holidays she reads to us if she has already cleaned, cooked, and baked everything that is customary for that time. Every household does the same things. My mother accepted these village customs. But she also keeps the old ones that she brought from home. She doesn’t have time to read. She deciphers a letter from time to time. If someone gives her a newspaper, she falls asleep over it immediately in the evening. Sometimes she borrows Nők lapja, the women’s magazine, from Mariska Botos. She looks at the pictures while rocking the Little One. We have no books. We don’t even get a newspaper.
“There’s no money for that. We’re not lords,” says my mother whenever I say that I would like to get the children’s magazine Dörmögő Dömötör. The forester’s son is allowed to get it. There are just a few almanacs, some issues of the Golden Almanac, in the bottom of the trunk with the armrests. That’s where we keep all the papers. They are damp and moldy.
My mother takes the ragged, battered book with the blue cover from the trunk. The pages are crumbling. We’re not allowed to touch it. She acts all mysterious, hiding it away. Half of the pages are covered with strange, angular letters. My father doesn’t like to see this book. My mother hides it from him. Once, they quarreled about it. I didn’t understand why. She only takes it out if she is certain that our father is not going to come home. Like now. Because my father is in Kenderes or in Vésztő. I don’t know exactly where. Only that he’s far away.
On the table, the candles are burning. My mother put coal in the stove to keep the warmth, so it won’t go out right away. She sprinkled lemon peels and sugar onto the surface of the stove. There’s a fragrance of cinnamon, because she warmed up some of my father’s wine. In the afternoon, she browned sugar in the dented, one-handled cast-iron pan. We got caramel today so we would remember this holiday. My mother wants the atmosphere to be ceremonious. So that we will not forget this evening.
She’s already fed my little brother. He is surrounded by pillows. The Little One is playing with his hands in bed. My mother has put the book on the table. She looks at the letters with great concentration, because it is hard for her to read. Her face is full of effort. The wrinkles cross back and forth on her high forehead. The water of pure brooks flows in her blue eyes. Sometimes the brook overflows its banks. Then the tears run down her face. And sh
e begins in a ceremonial voice.
“You see, this is the bread of destitution,” she reads, following the lines with her stubby fingers. Her nails are dirty and cracked. “In this year we are still slaves, but in the future we shall be the free children of God. Let us reflect upon,” and here she begins to stumble, “upon the i-de,” she reads, syllable by syllable. She is uncertain. Because she doesn’t understand what she’s reading. She sets to it again, tying the sounds into knots, syllable by syllable. She raises her finger and puts it one line back, underneath the sentence she just read. You can tell that she hears her own voice as something alien to her.
“Reflect upon the i-de-al,” she reads out slowly, paying close attention. Then she is calmer, because it’s going better now. Although it’s clear that she still doesn’t understand. I don’t understand, either, but I don’t dare ask. I don’t want to bother her.
“Reflect upon the ideal that led them in their lives and in their deaths. The ideal that this holiday commemorates . . .”
Then she stands up, looks up from the book, and says only:
“Easter, you know.”
And once again she bows her head, knits her brows. Once again, the wrinkles run across her forehead. Her finger still rests at the line she had been reading; now her gaze returns there. And she continues where she left off. She’s fretting like a child who is afraid of getting stuck while reading. She’s also afraid that we might ask a question. She avoids my gaze. She’s less afraid of my older sister. This isn’t interesting to her, but to me it is. That’s why she avoids my gaze when she looks up. She quickly bows her head and continues reading: “This ideal: freedom, the limits of which must be truth and love. If your children shall ask you what is the meaning of these customs, commandments, and laws that have been bequeathed to us by Our Lord God, then answer unto them thus: We were slaves . . .” Here she stops. She looks around. The Little One is trying to catch her gaze. Everything is fine. She relaxes.
The Dispossessed Page 4